8/8/2019 She Loved, Was Loved, And Died
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Alex Pickering
Mr. Sisti
ENG4U1
23 September 2010
I yearn for more of the time that I had spent with Bernard in
Paris. Its vivid in
my mind the love we shared. The truth is, in life I was never
the woman he thought I
was. I was unfaithful to him, I wanted to be true, alas my
morals were too few and my
needs were too strong, I betrayed his love time and time again
with men that were
nothing to me sometimes even for money.
I walk beside my lover, my husband, in grief I reach out to
touch him from my
world, he feels nothing. I see him in our room, our bed, our
walls I feel his pain. I see
him trembling as he stares into in the looking glass at the
entrance to our apartment, my
looking glass, Im there, Im in there, and he doesnt see me. He
sits by my grave, Im by
his side, I reach out to him, and he feels nothing.
It tortures me that my passing was too swift, I was not able to
make my peace
with him, say my goodbyes and, oh how the guilt has enveloped me
since my passing. I
desire to have lived my life in a different way, as a good wife.
What made me do the
things I did? Was it the excitement, the thrill of the unknown
who knows? Not even I .
I want to tell Bernard that I did love him and still do. As I
paint this picture of myself, I
plead that you dont see me as a scandalous woman but one who
needed more than one
man could give. I prayed that Bernard would never find out about
my secret life after my
demise, alas, the truth came to him in a way unimaginable.
You see Im in an ethereal state and at night I join with others
in shame, my spirit
inhabits my decaying corpse and I leave my grave and rewrite the
words on my
tombstone. Scratching with a stone, I engrave the truth, only
for my words to dissolve in
the light of the morning sun and Bernards words to reappear.
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8/8/2019 She Loved, Was Loved, And Died
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She loved, was loved, and died.
In truth, the last day I went out in search of excitement, I put
on my bonnet and
boots, it was overcast, raining a little when I left the
apartment, I thought that it would
stop but it was unrelenting, heavier and heavier it came down. I
didnt even get to my
usual haunt before I had to turn back, soaked to the skin. I
caught terrible cold,
pneumonia they said it was, I died four days later.
On the night Bernard learned the truth I had been by his side
for as long as I was able.
He took off to the cemetery and lay on my grave sobbing, I lay
there with him, and we
stayed like that for a long time. It started to get dark and it
was time for him to leave, but
he took off to the other side of the cemetery and hid. I wanted
him to leave, I wanted him
to be safe because I knew what was to come. He walked, and I
walked with him to the
oldest part of the cemetery and he hid under a tree. He stayed
there until midnight, there
was no moon and when he came from his hiding place he walked,
stumbling and
knocking into tombs. I could feel my spirit being torn back to
my corpse, helpless to
resist, like an addiction I couldnt fight the urge to rewrite my
epitaph I wrote:
Having gone out in the rain one day
in order to deceive her lover
she caught a cold and died
Bernard came running towards me; I tried to stop, I tried to
stop. He read the words and
fell onto my grave, not a word, not a sound did he make. He lay
there until morning; I
lay with him when workmen found him. They carried him to a
shelter and I followed, I
will follow always, my love, my pain, my sorrow, my fault.
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